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theodp writes "Three Amazon inventors set out to correct what they felt was a real problem: that 'out-of-print or rare books ... typically do not include advertisements ... the content is fixed and, therefore, has not been adapted to modern marketing.' Their solution is spelled out in newly-disclosed Amazon patent applications for On-Demand Generating E-Book Content with Advertising and Incorporating Advertising in On-Demand Generated Content. From the patent apps, here's what the future of reading may look like: 'For instance, if a restaurant is described on page 12, [then the advertising page], either on page 11 or page 13, may include advertisements about restaurants, wine, food, etc., which are related to restaurants and dining.' So, what would a delightfully-tacky-yet-unrefined Hooters ad do for your Hemingway experience?"

This is totally pointless. I mean, if you already paid for the book, why should there have to be ads? Heck with digital distribution why even have ads on free stuff because the price of the device itself more than makes up for the minuscule price of transfer.

Because they are greedy. Why stop there? Why not insert the name of the restaurant into the text? Auto replace "restaurant" with "Chili's". Does the main character put on a coat? Why not make it an Armani coat? Does she take a sip of water? Spice up that water to your brand soft drink for a small fee! Why stop there? Let sponsors have characters "As Captain 'Pizza Hut' Ahab looked out over the sea, he saw her, Moby Dick, brought to you by Target."

Seriously, though if I wanted ads breaking up what I was reading, I'd buy a newspaper. But I don't so I'll never buy one of those books or a newspaper.

'Share and Enjoy' is the company motto of the hugely successful Microsoft Complaints Division, which now covers the major land masses of three medium-sized planets and is the only part of the Corporation to have shown a consistent profit in recent years.The motto stands-- or rather stood-- in three mile high illuminated letters near the Complaints Department spaceport on Eadrax. Unfortunately its weight was such that shortly after it was erected, the ground beneath the letters caved in and they dropped for nearly half their length through the offices of many talented young Complaints executives-- now deceased.The protruding upper halves of the letters now appear, in the local language, to read "Go stick your head in a pig," and are no longer illuminated, except at times of special celebration.

Good god, why not just stick ads in all the old works? I'm sure Picasso would have put a coke machine in Guernica if he knew how cool and refreshing it was....'I painted this to protest the lack of coca-cola in my homeland. It will be returned to Spain when there is a coke machine on every corner'

I don't get it. Where are the advertisements? You had a great idea, but you forgot to mix the ads in with your text--find great text with Bing! the greatest search engine made by the greatest software company in the world. <-- like this.

This is no different than cable TV. I pay x dollars a month just to watch via cable. But then I still get advertisements thrown in. I get ads between "scenes", I get ads that are product placements, and then, imho the worst are those that the channel overlays some animation in the corner.

So changing "Bob goes into his local restaurant for a greasy cheeseburger" to "Bob goes into TGIFridays for their Super Texan Bacon Burger" is only one step. Most of the books I own have blank margins. Why not put a few ads in there? At the end of a chapter, if the chapter ends with a partial page, why not just put a 1/2 page ad there? I'd love to see, "STIHL Chainsaws present, Chapter 6 in Stephen King's new thriller..."

My phonebook has a section in the middle with coupons, why not inject a few pages of coupons into the next Harry Potter book? I'm sure all the teenagers reading it could benefit from the acne cream ads.

I always thought that most people today that read Stephen King's Christine had no idea what a 1958 Plymouth Fury looked like. So maybe they should update it to be a 2008 Toyota Prius. Now while the Prius doesn't evoke fear due to it's toothy chrome grille or tension with it's low rumbling demon-like engine. I'm sure someone would be scared of being sneaked up on by a hybrid.

Channel overlays are a crime. There's a reason more and more people go to sites like watchtvsitcoms.com and Piratebay. People are revolting and instead of figuring out the cause, the companies complain.

Is producing TV cheap? No, it's not. But instead of giving multi-million dollar contracts to stars, cancel them. Simon wants $1.4 million per show? Bye-bye. Friends want $750,000 per ep each? It was a nice run, have fun in your next ventures.

What a delightfully evil idea! And by the way, it's quite possibly patentable itself. And it would be a totally legitimate derivative work of public domain works. Couple it with some Google Adword algorithms, include hyperlinks to relevant products, and you've got a winning idea! (By the way, for $2,500, I could get you a provisional patent application on the idea---no joke).

You could even work the algorithm to add or mutate whole sentences. Just think: "Elizabeth Bennett quickly spritzed some Chanel

This is totally pointless. I mean, if you already paid for the book, why should there have to be ads?

I keep seeing this faulty argument involving the concept of "paying twice". It's not that you're being asked to pay again, it's that you didn't fully "pay" the first time. It'd be like buying a $10 product and paying $5 up-front, and having the other $5 paid by advertising it shows.

That aside, isn't this patent a good thing? It means that only Amazon's products will be crippled with advertising inserted in

I keep seeing this faulty argument involving the concept of "paying twice". It's not that you're being asked to pay again, it's that you didn't fully "pay" the first time. It'd be like buying a $10 product and paying $5 up-front, and having the other $5 paid by advertising it shows.

The vast majority of books do not include such advertisements, but the publishers do still turn a profit. It's not like with magazines, where the costs of a print run are typically higher than revenue from subscription fees. With books, you're usually paying for the costs of printing the book and an extra amount on top. Thus, the idea that you aren't paying for the book in full is simply false. The ads are just extra profit for the publisher.

It's greed coupled with a total disregard for the artistic integrity of a work.

Except it doesn't work like that with ads. You can watch public television for free and get ads, or you can pay money to watch cable television and get ads. You can pay $50 for Battlefield 1942, or you can pay $50 for Battlefield 2142 and get ads.

Ads increase profit for companies, they never decrease the price of products, except those offered for free (like Google.)

Ads increase profit for companies, they never decrease the price of products

That's because people still buy the ad-infested products. Vote with your wallet. I personally pass over anything with ads, like TV, magazines, newspapers, or DVDs with unskippable ads. There are plenty of things not ad-infested.

It's because whenever people come up with a viable alternative the industry kills it by demanding that legislators make it illegal. They're not always successful, but in most cases they are. Free markets are all well and good, as long as they're actually free. The problem is that in places like the US, we've got a free market when it's convenient to business and a heavily regulated market when it's inconvenient for the consumer.

The cost of TV would go down dramatically if people had the opportunity to ma

Legal choices. If you remove that condition, you can get all the TV you want with no regional limitations of any kind, and with no advertisements of any kind. I have seen a few shows that even have those annoying overlays removed and replaced with less obtrusive blurring. Those choices are quite numerous as well. I would not touch PirateBay with a 10ft pole. Probably completely infected with god knows what. There are plenty of smaller membership

I'm willing to bet that your DVD decrypter takes longer than just sitting through the ads one time. I'd rather just get a player that ignores those flags.

Anyways, the point would be that we have to discourage this sort of stuff, or they'll just keep getting more and more intrusive.

DVD decrypter, editing the film works for current, separate ads, but it doesn't work for product placement where the ads are actually incorporated into the actual show. Everybody drinking various coke brands with no sign of peps

You can watch public television for free and get ads, or you can pay money to watch even more channels than you can get OVA and get ads except on the premium channels where you really are paying for the content and not just the delivery of it.

That aside, isn't this patent a good thing? It means that only Amazon's products will be crippled with advertising inserted in this manner.

Patents get licensed. In terms of your description, $10 product would get sold for $6 by other publishers - $5 "up front" and $1 to cover the patent royalty.

Amazon has an interesting self-publishing business (forget what it is called and I'm certainly not going to advertise for them), but I can imagine them offering trade-quality books which aren't otherwise available (out of copyright, let alone print) at a discount if they can use 1 page in 20 for adverts.

"The Scarlet Pimpernel" might be $10 if printed without ads, but less if the buyer chooses that option. Amazon could advertise it's own related goods (perhaps a Hornblower video, to suggest something not directly related but close enough) and provide a discount voucher (with unique code) either per book printed or per advert.

Of course, some time soon, printing on demand will become efficient for individual books. If Amazon wants a slice of advertising in any of them, then a patent "works" - but as far as I can see it is a business method.

In short: if they want to put ads in books printed to demand to cut end-user costs, fine. If every left=even page had an ad and books were free, I'd love it. But patent? Printed media have sufficient prior art for advertising, tyvm.

Except it's far more likely they'll charge you $15 for the improved experience of an ad-infested book and earn another $15 through advertising. Why on earth would they decrease the price now that they're providing a new feature?

The vast majority of Kindle downloads are indeed priced at $9.99 or less (and a third of them are freebies)Amazon is subsidizing the cost of those $9.99 books, which means they're just barely profitable.Bernstein analysts Claudio estimate th

I wouldn't mind a tasteful, text-only add in its own table that doesn't interrupt the flow of the text I'm reading. I would mind full-image or full-page ads.

I suggest doing it the way authors like Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams used footnotes. Put an asterisk, add a footnote advertisement, and make it funny and in context with the text. Then I might actually buy whatever crap they're hawking.

"I wouldn't mind a tasteful, text-only add in its own table that doesn't interrupt the flow of the text I'm reading."

I would. Books are the last advertisement-free stronghold, the last place we can turn for entertainment that does not come loaded with advertisements. There is no possible way to place a tasteful ad in a book, and the concept should be immediately dropped. Honestly, how greedy can these publishers get?

I will not buy a single book from any publisher that engages in this practice (unle

People get their panties in a bunch over the idea of in-program ads in TV shows (rather than between them), or ads in books, or wherever they aren't already, but a lot of the old shows from the beginning of broadcast television had actors or their characters do amusing and sometimes even witty product placements.

Such placements can really date the show if the company concerned has changed their branding radically or ceased to exist.

The reason why patents, such as this fine example, exist is simple. It's so fucking retarded that whenever you want to argue against it you don't even know where to begin. Mark my words, soon you'll read a/. article saying that breathing oxygen has been patented, and that you'll have to pay royalties in order to exercise it.

Seriously. It means that anyone else with this idiotic idea will have to pay a royalty fee, which should discourage them. Unless you want to fight a prior art campaign against Amazon, claiming magazines with ads are prior art. Either way the money will discourage people from trying and this idea will die a lonely death.

Except for Amazon of course, since they hold the patent. But they can try it, and then they can see for themselves just how great this idea is when they launch it. It'll tank, hard. Nobody will want this.

It wouldn't at all surprise me if somebody or somebodies, including the big guys, try hard to kill this one before it leaves the application phase.

A huge percentage of web pages these days are dynamically generated, on demand, and includes ads. This patent could, plausibly, be seen to cover that. First, that provides a giant helping of prior art. Second, it means that there are loads of big serious companies who Amazon could theoretically go after if they got this patent.

Seriously. It means that anyone else with this idiotic idea will have to pay a royalty fee, which should discourage them. Unless you want to fight a prior art campaign against Amazon, claiming magazines with ads are prior art. Either way the money will discourage people from trying and this idea will die a lonely death.

Except for Amazon of course, since they hold the patent. But they can try it, and then they can see for themselves just how great this idea is when they launch it. It'll tank, hard. Nobody will want this.

That's the thing I don't understand, about all of these ideas. None of them come from overwhelming customer demand.

Am I to believe that no one EVER gives them any suggestions, feature requests, etc.? Should I believe also that they never conduct any sort of market analysis, or hold focus groups, or otherwise try to find out what people already want so that they can come up with ways to meet that need?

This is about control just like far too many things I hear about that come from either corporations

There's two kinds of marketing: To people who want your product and can benefit from it, and people who don't and don't need it. The former kind is a legitimate career; there is a product, and people who want it, and you are merely connecting them. Examples include concert posters and ads with lots of specifications and a product picture with no boobies, e.g. for water pumps. The latter is a terrible scourge upon this planet, for example the ads for Pull-Ups training pants that STILL pop into my head for no

If you've ever met somebody involved with marketing or fund raising you'd realize that they see $ on everything. Trust me, they'd charge a person being given an award for the plaque if they could get away with it. The only thing that ever kills ideas like that is if people opt to have nothing than accept whatever it is.

I am so sick of ads. Just yesterday I swore off using youtube, what with all their ads overlaid on top of videos now.

I also recently compared the same exact video on hulu (which has ads) to itunes. The video from itunes was much, much better (sharper, better framerate) and no ads. Hulu video was complete crap - now way I could stand watching that. I'll gladly pay a reasonable price for a superior product.

I wondered what sorts of ads Google would put in Tom Sawyer. Cave tours? Paint companies? Anatomy textbooks? But I see that Google itself offers no paid links when I search on "Tom Sawyer."

I wondered what sorts of ads Google would put in "The Pit and the Pendulum." Rat poison? Grandfather clocks? Surcingles... whatever a surcingle is? But I see that Google itself offers no paid links when I search on "The Pit and the Pendulum."

It's not all that surprising that no one's interested in buying space on the search terms you listed (Amazon won't allow affiliates to do that, fyi). If you put the text of those books on a page with an adsense box, I'm sure Google would find something to put there.

Yes, but the new Idea is that if you download the book as eBook you get an up-to-date advert with the current flavor of "Heisse Tasse".

But then German SF won't be sold for Kindle anyway. After the way Amazon has treated Mobipocket the scene has created such a resentment towards DRM that the world largest SF series will be sold as DRM free ePUB pretty soon.

Maybe it was only done by a handful of (German?) publishers, but I remember going through my parents bookshelves and flipping through some paper back whodunits and some had one or two pages with ads, sometimes in context to the story. i.e. making a reference to the story.A little bit like with old time radio shows: "While $detective leans back with a $cigarette, waiting for the guy to leave the house again, why not get yourself a $cigarette with their unique flavor and

You must not buy many books, or more likely, you don't remember. I have three books here on my desk, and one of them is covered on the back with advertisements for other related technical books. Lots of books do this, it's not particularly new. As long as they don't try to manipulate, deceive, or annoy me I am fine with them. Good advertising is good: it lets you know about something you might be interested in. Bad advertising is deceptive and in your face.

There have certainly been some interesting replies. I really havent seen any advertisements in a book. I have seen the occasional ad at the back of the book for another book from the publisher related to the material but I have not seen ads sprinkled throughout a book ever... and i hope i never do.

I dont really ever remember seeing and advertisement in ANY BOOK I have ever purchased.

Most of the books I've purchased recently have anywhere from 3-10 pages of ads at the back. One of them had a really annoying ad on a thick sheet of card inserted in the middle of the book (Making Money, Terry Pratchett, Corgi Books paperback edition; the ad was for Pratchett's next book and gave details of how to preorder it via Tesco's web site... I don't know whether or not only copies sold by Tesco had this insertion

... for filtering book (and book advertiser) content through human decision-making processes.

I claim MY patent for "a method of monopolizing obvious ideas for which there is lots of prior art by means of convincing the Patent Office that the same old idea, when done with a computer, is somehow radically different and worthy of being treated like a new and innovative invention."

"Patent" my ass. What I would like to send them is a bag of burning dog shit on their front porch for even suggesting such an idea! It seems that every day we really are coming closer and closer to the insane world of the movie Idiocracy; these bastards want to put fucking advertisements on bloody everything! Them, them, fuck them!

I hope they have a good explanation of the difference between a magazine and a book, because non-fixed media magazines with changing ads are incredibly common. Of course, I've read several books online with ads in them [webscription.net] also, so either way, the prior art in this is massive and common.

Not sure if this serves as prior art re e-books, but Chris Whittle was including ads in books in the late 1980s [nytimes.com], before Amazon was launched and e-books existed in a meaningful commercial form.

Sure, it's a stupid patent. Sure, it merely applies existing general techniques to a specific domain they were already applicable to. But as far as I'm concerned, Amazon can have this patent and have it forever. Then I'll know if I get e-books from a competitor, there won't be any stinking ads in them.

I think people have already invented this. It is called Readers Digest. Merely switching from a magazine format to a book format is irrelevant, particularly because it is coming in electronic format, not paper.

How about putting ads inside ads? Take a look at an ad, any ad. Open a magazine and look at an ad. Look at all that space in there. Plenty of room to jam another ad right in the middle. TV? Sure, lots of space to cram another ad inside an ad. Use picture in picture. Heck, you could cover the first ad entirely with other ads using picture in picture and depending on the size of each extra ad I bet that you would more than double your money! Radio? Heck yeah. Lot's of space. Just cram the words for another ad into the spaces between the words of the first ad. The possibilities are endless!

The german Heyne Verlag used to insert adds with a similar technique into early BattleTech books. There was only one such add in them but it was so obtrusive that I swore never to buy the advertised product - an instant soup of some kind.

One more reason to be glad that Kindle is still not sold in Europe. Amazons eBook strategy is just disgraceful in all aspects and every day the Kindle start in Europe is delayed is a good day for eBooks and it gives the competition here another day head start.

I just hope that by the time Amazon's Kindle makes it out of the US they have lost so much ground that they never be able to catch up.

The earlier we have a way to let some idiot sue everyone on the planet for putting ads in their books, the better.Now all we have to do, is not buy amazon ebooks, and anonymously inform amazon, that their sales go down because of other companies selling cheaper books with ads in them.

If Amazon monopolizes placing ads in books, I'm all for it. A lot of their other patents are on equally annoying behaviors, so they are good because they keep other companies from doing these stupid things.

I've got books going back to the 1920's at least that have adverts at the back for various semi-related products. I've not seen ads in the main book text before but adverts in general have been there for quite some time.

Or, because the advert passes into your brain at only a subconscious level, it's more powerful than it ever has been before.

Nah. I know it's radical and not terribly popular these days, but it's called "being your own person." There's this thing that goes along with that, known as "making your own decisions."

Does that sound like a bunch of sarcasm? I'm sure it does. It's still the truth. Maybe someone else would have put that in a more palatable way for you, but I was handy, so there you go. Most of advertising is so effective because people are willing to consult anything except for their own reasoning when it comes to

the mark of a person who has any sort of personal advancement whatsoever is that these "subconscious" cues increasingly become conscious decisions.

(Most) advertising these days, perhaps as always, preys on the flaws we have found through exploration of our biology and psyche. You can consider advertising as the front-line of the consciousness wars, because they deliberately try to circumvent both inherent mechanisms one has toward discrimination as well as any added scripts one have patched into place to try and jump out of their box. Witness the rise in ads that target "enlightenment" in some sense, while selling a car, or moisturizer.

I'll put that another way. If Yogis can go to extreme, sub-zero mountainous regions wearing minimal clothing, and consciously control their body heat output to the point that they can fully dry soaking wet, freezing-cold cloths multiple times a night (because their alternative is freezing to death), then you can be your own person and become aware of subconscious influences and reject them.

Just remember "To see it partially or to fail to see it clearly is to be influenced by it", and if you believe that you can see everything clearly 100% of the time, you're really just fooling yourself.

So ah, who told you that? A marketer? I say this with no intention of causing offense: I think your confusion on this is great, and so if you will please have some patience with me, I will explain the same thing a few different ways and hope that one of them is readily accessible to you.

You don't need to see everything clearly. You just need to see yourself clearly (that's only one thing; let "everything" take care of itself). When you can do that, then instead of feeling that something affected you

.. but Amazon has not yet started to sell eBooks in Europe. Actually Amazon has Mobipocket to sell world wide - but - Amazon started to kill off Mobipocket even before starting to sell Kindle world wide. Which will leave them without an world wide eBook strategy quite soon.